


Leningrad

by writethelifeyouwant



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Eventual Romance, F/M, Friendship, Kidnapping, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-04-24 10:05:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19171072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writethelifeyouwant/pseuds/writethelifeyouwant
Summary: When an unsub seriously escalates his timeline of kidnapping and killing young college girls in New York, the team is called in to investigate. This is not necessarily meant to fit in to canon but the team is Season 10 pre Kate’s pregnancy. It is an 'episode' fic but with much more emphasis on Reid. Cross posted on Tumblr and FFN.





	1. Chapter 1

Life moves on and so should we. -Spencer Johnson

The pavement slipped by beneath his feet as he trudged towards the snow-dusted red awning on the busy New York street. Blaring snaps of hip-hop music faded in and out as cars pushed through the slush and mud coating the roads. It was bitterly, bitingly, cold but he was only marginally aware of the numb feeling creeping from the tip of his nose to the rest of his face until he turned under the awning and a stifling heat rushed through him.

Inside, the humidity that restaurants get when they're overcrowded during the winter engulfed the newcomer but he didn't make any moves to remove his winter clothes. After glancing towards the right corner of the room he pulled his scarf tighter around his face and hunched down in his coat, as if he was preparing to once more step out into the wind. Instead, he started moving purposefully through the restaurant, towards the lighted signs proclaiming the entrances to the restrooms and the kitchens, respectively.

As he passed the doors to the kitchen and turned down the hall to the men's room he observed that the cash station for the wait staff was currently occupied by two young women in ill-fitting white collared shirts. They were not who he was looking for. He ducked into the bathroom, checked that he was alone, and waited.

Through the crack between the door hinge and its frame he could hear the two waitresses complaining about the lack of tips their tables had been getting that day. He peered through the infinitesimal gap and saw them print their receipts and begin to retreat back towards the main dining room. Then, as he had hoped, he heard a faint greeting as they passed another waitress on her way to the cash station.

"Hi Anya."

"Hey guys."

Another waitress in the same unflattering uniform approached the cash station and began to enter the necessary information to run the customer's credit card. The man quietly exited the restroom and reached into his large fur-lined overcoat, pulling a small hand gun from an inside pocket. Angling his body so his back faced the entrance to the hall, he carefully placed the gun against the girl's waist.

"Anya," he spoke in a low, calmly controlled voice. "Will you please walk with me to that fire exit?”

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“Oh, Penelope, this is exactly what we needed. Thank you,” Kate sighed as she snuggled down into her seaweed wrap. 

“Of course! My crime fighting beauties deserve their beauty rest. And I really needed some tension released.” 

“Fight with Sam?” JJ asked sympathetically, taking a sip of her white wine. 

“No, but it might turn into one soon if he doesn’t learn a few more facts about the female anatomy.” Penelope huffed. 

“Ooh, that bad?” JJ asked. 

“I don’t think I’m asking for anything out of the realm of possibility! Google can tell him plenty if he bothers to look.” 

“And have you tried telling him any of these tips yourself?” Kate laughed. 

“Not in… so many words,” Penelope’s face noticeably reddened in acknowledgement of her embarrassment. “But he seemed so confident going into…” she waved her hands randomly in front of her to fill in the words she didn’t want to say. “I don’t want to make him question everything else about his life he thinks he’s good at!” The girls giggled at Penelope’s flustered explanation.

“Pen, if you don’t want to die of sexual frustration you’re gonna have to tell him. I would think you taking charge wouldn’t be too out of the ordinary for him.” JJ wiggled her eyebrows at Penelope, taking another long drink of her wine. Penelope huffed in amusement. 

“I had to have the same conversation with Chris when we started dating. He was only briefly mortified before he applied himself very enthusiastically to righting that wrong.” Kate shared, grabbing her own wine. “Totally worth it.” 

The girls all giggled and continued to chat and sip at their drinks as they enjoyed the much needed relaxation, cocooned in their respective body treatment wraps. The bubbly atmosphere popped when three text tones rang out in near concurrence. 

“Well, this was fun while it lasted,” JJ sighed. 

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Spencer walked into the conference room with his large mug of coffee and plopped himself into the swivel chair at the table, spinning a complete three-sixty before he settled his drink next to the file in front of him, pushing his curly hair back out of his eyes. 

"Reid, man, you have got to get a haircut," Morgan laughed.

"Really?" Reid self-consciously ran his hands through his, admittedly unruly, hair again. "I kind of liked it like this…" His voice trailed off as he anxiously thought back to the last time he'd had an awful haircut and had caught some of the students at the academy laughing about it as he passed them on his way up to the lectern. No one had done that lately, he thought maybe he had rectified the situation.

"Don't listen to him Spence," JJ cut in. "I think it looks good like this."

"Seriously JJ?" Morgan scoffed good-naturedly. His ribbing tone made it obvious he wasn't taking the whole situation too seriously, he just wanted to wind Reid up.

"Oh yeah! Skinny guy, curly hair, forgot to shave; that look's hot right now." JJ and the team cracked up as Spencer blushed but also looked shyly pleased with himself.

"You said it sister," Garcia piped up as she hurried into the conference room with her unicorn mug and her personal clicking device. "Unfortunately, I am here to give you a look at something much less pretty. We have a missing girl."

Garcia positioned herself by the screen and brought up two photos of young, blue-eyed, mousy haired girls. They were severely unattractive license photos but Spencer could tell the girls would have been pretty under normal circumstances. The next pictures Garcia brought up were even more unattractive.

"Three weeks ago in the lovely but crime filled city of New York," Garcia started, "our girl on the left, Lina Mills, was found in her apartment, shot once execution-style in the back of the head. Police connected her murder to that of our first victim, Katerina Russo. She was found in her apartment about six months ago, same thing one shot to the back of the head." Garcia grimaced and quickly looked away from the very high definition photos of the girls staring into space with blood running down into their eyes.

Morgan was flicking through more of the crime scene pictures on his tablet while she was talking. "These girls weren't killed in their apartments, there's not enough blood."

"You're right," Rossi mused, "he has to have a secondary location where he kills them. But why bring them back to their own apartments? That seems unnecessarily risky."

"It's very risky," Reid added, "It looks like these girls were missing for at least a week before they were killed according to the police reports. There would have been enhanced surveillance around their homes but he still got their bodies back in without anyone stopping him.”

“Both girls also show evidence of torture and starvation according to the ME reports. That must be why he’s keeping them so long. It’s about the time he spends torturing them, not how he kills them.” Kate volunteered. 

"Was there any evidence of sexual assault?" JJ asked mutedly as she scanned through the reports on her own tablet.

"No there wasn’t," Hotch answered as he strode into the room, simultaneously hanging up his cell phone. "I just got off with the NYPD confirming our invite in. They called us about this girl," he pointed at the screen as Garcia brought up a third picture of a young, pretty girl with light brown hair and blue eyes, just like the previous victims.

"Her name is Anya Hamlin, she's 18, just started at NYU. Her boss reported her missing when she disappeared half way through her waitressing shift this afternoon."

"How do they know this girl was taken by the same unsub?" Morgan put in.

"Anya and the last victim, Lina, took a few classes together at NYU. She was one of the girls they interviewed when Lina went missing.” Hotch grimaced. 

"Okay so this guys is definitely working on a specific target list then, going after girls in the same group," Rossi spoke up. "Did they have any connection to the first victim?"

Garcia answered, "not that NYPD has found but I'm digging into it right now sir."

"Alright, well, keep us updated on the plane Garcia. Wheels up in 20 everyone.”


	2. Chapter 2

Anya woke dimly, feeling the crushing pain that forced her into unconsciousness continue to press the breath from her lungs. Her vision was blurred, but even if it hadn’t been she wouldn’t have been able to see more than the darkness she had been engulfed in for the past day. 

Had it been a day? It felt endless. She had no sense of where she was or when she got there. In a distant memory she could see herself walking towards a blinking red exit sign, the feel of the gun pressed against her back burning panic into her skin. She hadn’t tried to speak, hadn’t tried to fight. She was frozen inside her head, not really controlling the movement of her feet as they stumbled over the doorjamb into the grimy alley behind the restaurant. 

Her captor hadn’t spoken either, just carefully walked her towards the back of the alley, away from the main avenue filled with cars and people. People, the one thing that might have saved her. But he had thought of that. As they rounded the corner onto another side street Anya saw the car parked and waiting for them. To her horror, she heard the electric click of a car remote and thee trunk popped open. 

Her breath started to come in strangled gasps, she couldn’t manage to fill her lungs with air because the fear had seeped into every empty crevice of her body but still, she couldn’t bring herself to make a single noise. The gun against her back shoved hard and Anya tumbled forward into the cramped trunk of the old car. She looked up, finally seeing her captor, before a blinding pain seared across her eyes as thee man struck her with the butt of his gun. The darkness embraced her. 

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The team settled into their typical spots on the jet. Kate, Rossi, JJ and Morgan at the small table, Hotch perched against the arm of a chair across from them, and Reid reclining on the couch, displaying his mismatched socks beneath his slacks. 

“Let’s go over victimology.” Hotch intoned, and he and the team opened their tablets while Reid flicked through the pages of his hard copies.

“Well he definitely has a type,” JJ started, thumbing though the pictures Garcia had compiled of the petite mousy girls. The images flashing across the tablets showed happy faces, senior photos, families laughing, memories of young lives that these girls should still be living. 

“They’ve gotta be a surrogate for someone the unsub knows,” Derek added. “They’re incredibly similar looking.” 

“I think you’re right,” Hotch nodded. “Get Garcia up on the screen, will you?” Morgan hummed his assent and hit the requisite buttons on the laptop. Penelope’s sunshiny face, outlined today by pink streaks through her hair, popped into focus on the small screen. 

“Hello my heroes! What have you got for me?” 

“Garcia, have you managed to find any connection between our first and second victims yet?” Hotch leaned forward from his perch to make himself more comfortable as he spoke. 

“Unfortunately nothing solid yet. Our first victim, Katerina Russo, or Katie as she preferred to be called, was a bit younger, she was supposed to turn 18 last August but she didn’t make it to her birthday.” Garcia’s face was the picture of sympathy as she continued to rattle off her findings on the girl. “She had applied to several colleges already, looking for early admission definitely. One of those was NYU but that list also includes most of the major schools in the tri-state area. I’m not sure we can really call that a connection yet.” 

“Garcia, was Katie taking any college courses through her high-school? Something that might have been taught off-site at NYU maybe?” Reid jumped in. 

“Um let’s see, genius boy…” Garcia clicked for a few moments before answering. “Yes, Katie was taking several Advanced placements courses, one of which is a Manhattan-based college course, meaning that professors from schools like NYU, Columbia, Fordham, you get the gist, all helped develop thee program so the credits would help students skip freshman requirements when they enrolled in college.” 

“What class was Katie taking?” 

“Um… it looks like Katie was enrolled in their history survey course over the summer, we’re talking European history from the Renaissance until like, now. But the class was taught on her high school campus by high-school faculty. No where near NYU.” Garcia grimaced apologetically. 

“Okay, well, keep looking for any other points of cross-over Katie might have had with Lina and Anya. Maybe coffee shops, shopping malls, parties they might have gone to, that sort of thing,” Hotch instructed.

“Aye aye, captain!” Garcia signed off with a salute. 

“Okay everyone, when we land, I want to hit the ground running. Dave, Morgan, I want you to go to Anya’s abduction site and start coordinating with the team there. JJ, Reid go to the coroners office and hook up with the ME. Kate, you and me are going to go to the station and speak with the families of our first two victims.”

Everyone nodded their acquiescence to Hotch’s assignments and began to settle in to the final twenty minutes of their short flight to New York. 

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The fluorescent lights of the morgue hummed lowly in the cold room. With the metal walls and tables it felt like they had stepped into an icebox. Reid and JJ both pulled their jackets a little tighter around themselves. Neither of them had much body-fat to keep them warm after all. The figure of a petite girl lay in front of them under a dingy sheet. 

The Medical Examiner pulled the cover off the girl, revealing a waxen figure. Her body had been cleaned and embalmed, to prevent its decomposition pending investigation of her murder. The BAU hadn’t been the first port of call for the detectives working to catch her killer, and the M.E. had gone over Lina’s injuries and cause of death so frequently since her arrival at the morgue she knew the answers to most investigators questions without having to reference her primary notes. 

Lina’s body looked almost peaceful if you could ignore the bruising that dappled her ghostly skin. Her face had been reconstructed following the gunshot, so her family could have an open casket funeral after law enforcement released her body from evidence. Reid and JJ approached the dead girl with a practiced ease and forensic curiosity but their faces both registered fleeting traces of their more private feelings. It was always sad to see such young lives cut so brutally short. Especially when it was clear just how much they had suffered before they succumbed to the release of death.

“So this is our most recent victim, Lina Mills,” the ME started in. “The first victim, the first girl, Katerina Russo, was buried shortly after her autopsy and her parents have requested that we don’t exhume her body unless completely necessary.”

“Can I see her medical report?” Reid reached forward and took the proffered clip-board, scanning the entirety of the ME’s findings in a few seconds. “How consistent are the wounds between Katerina and Lina?” 

“I’d say they’re consistent, but Lina’s injuries are far more extensive.” The ME pulled up the section of sheets covering the body’s leg, displaying a mottled pattern of bruising and a very clearly dislocated knee. There were shallow cuts littering the skin, and electrical burns on the soles of her feet. It was sickening. 

“This kind of torture…” JJ trailed off, burying her own memories of pain deeper inside herself. “I don’t think there’s any kind of sexual component here. He’s not using the torture to get off. This reads more like interrogation.” 

“You’re right,” Reid murmured as he stooped to examine the bruising on the girl’s body more closely. “There’s no penetrative elements to what he’s doing. The bruises, electrical burns, ligature marks… they all look like what you see on POW’s. Do you have a time line for her injuries? Spencer asked. 

“Yes,” the ME glanced down at the clipboard detailing the original observations she had made several weeks ago. “The oldest burns and bruises start on her extremities and seemed to move slowly inward, towards the core of her body. They also seem to increase in brutality as time passes. She has several broken ribs and in some places the electrical burns have penetrated down to the hypodermis and exposed vascular tissue. She also had extremely low nutrient density and was severely dehydrated. If he hadn’t shot her, she would’ve died soon anyway from the lack of water and food.”

“Was this the same on the first victim from sixth months ago?” JJ asked. 

“Yes,” the ME nodded, “she was deprived of food and water as well but her injuries weren’t as extensive.”

“So he’s escalating the torture with each victim,” Spencer mused. “They must not be giving him what he wants to hear.” 

“Now we need to figure out what that is,” JJ nodded. 

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**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know your thoughts! Constructive criticism welcome :)  
> I hope you enjoyed...


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